There is many a good tune played on an old fiddle.

Warning! Elderly Person Blogging

My Life and Times

I was born in 1939 BC.
That's 'Before Computers'.
Luckily I survived the following events in my life, such as
World War II, The London Blitz, Rationing, and worst of all... Archbishop Temple's School.

During the mid 1950s I was enjoying Rock 'n' Roll and being a first generation teenager, when suddenly, just like Elvis, I found myself in uniform during 'The Cold War'...and then

I became 'a family'. Which meant that I sort of missed the 'swinging sixties', but still managed to look a complete prat in the 70s, just like everyone else.

During the 'Thatcher Years' I lost my hair and a lot of people lost a good deal more. My career fluctuated to say the least as I was demoted, promoted, fired and hired a number of times, but still I managed to stagger on into a welcome retirement and to celebrate 50 years of happy marriage.

“Laws are silent in times of war” … Cicero

The horror of war in Afghanistan has not changed since the 19th century when Rudyard Kipling wrote these words …

“When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.”

For some reason I was reminded of these words when reading about the Taliban fighter who was very near to death after being blasted by fire from an Apache helicopter, and was ‘helped on his way‘ by Royal Marine Sergeant Alex Blackman.

What this marine did was against the ‘rules of war’, but I am quite sure that these rules are broken on a fairly regular basis, and in the wicked waste of human lives that is the Afghan conflict no such ‘rules’ apply to the tactics of the Taliban.

Sergeant Blackman has been sentenced to a minimum of 10 years in prison, and obviously he should be made to suffer the consequences of his actions, but he is a highly regarded experienced fighting man, and if I was being held hostage in some Gawd-forsaken hole, the first face that I would hope to see come through the door, would be …

4 Responses to ““Laws are silent in times of war” … Cicero”

Whether or not the Taliban “play fair” is beside the point. If we believe that we are fighting a just fight (and, personally, I am less than certain about that), then we owe it to ourselves (not to the enemy, not to the publicists, not to the historians of future ages, but to ourselves), to conduct ourselves in as impeccably moral a manner as we can. If we compromise on the basis of some self-serving argument such as “They would have done the same to us”, then we have lost the moral argument and descended to the level of those we repudiate.

It is possible that other British servicemen and women have done similar things and the Blackman was the unlucky one who got caught doing it. That, however, is not a valid argument in his defence. We do not let burglars, forgers and murderers off because they are the unlucky ones who got caught. That would lead to the destruction of that precious thing we call civilization.

Blackman did something heinous; he got caught; and he has been sentenced. Those who try to make out that he is some sort of unlucky hero who ought to be allowed to go free are guilty of the worst sort of moral relativism.

Nice to hear from you once again, ‘Tiger’, and as usual you make some fair points.
However, I don’t seek to defend Blackman anymore than I would defend the actions of those who “gave no quarter” in other wars. In fact, as I said ..

..”and obviously he should be made to suffer the consequences of his actions”.

I merely draw attention to the British public’s ambivalent attitude to those who kill in their name …

There is always the conflict between wanting to be a human being and a killing machine and this will not be the first such incident nor the last. I have blogged about a recently released book about a pilot escaping from a POW camp in Pakistan and the story shows how human beings helped those prisoners. In real life, such things stand out and I would also like to see the same guy come through that door.